diff --git a/personal/interpersonal skills/Difficult Conversations.md b/personal/interpersonal skills/Difficult Conversations.md index 788c9da..39b133d 100644 --- a/personal/interpersonal skills/Difficult Conversations.md +++ b/personal/interpersonal skills/Difficult Conversations.md @@ -68,6 +68,7 @@ There are three levels of conversation you may need to have about the issue itse - **Content**: The first time a problem comes up, talk about the content - the immediate pain. *If the action or the immediate consequences are the issue, you have a content problem*. This is for when it's the first time something has happened. - **Pattern**: The next time a problem comes up, it means a pattern is starting to develop, or already has. It can be difficult to determine when something's a pattern, and when it's not, but it's important to address patterns early, before they're entrenched, and the problem becomes more difficult to address. As a general rule, the first time something happens, it's an incident. The second time, it may be coincidence. The third time, it is a pattern. - **Relationship**: As problems continue, they can begin to impact the relationship. Relationship issues get to deeper concerns about *trust*, *competence*, or *respect*. For example, we may begin to question whether we can trust a person to keep commitments, or begin to doubt someone's technical abilities. In some cases, a relationship issue can emerge after an extreme isolated incident. +- **Process**: When communication is infrequent, it's important to talk about how you are going to communicate. How are you going to make sure that everyone has a turn to speak? How will you make space for people to pause and think As a general example, if you have a general problem, you can choose to view it in a few different ways. The content ("This thing should happen") , the relationship ("I don't trust that you will make this thing happen"), or the pattern ("Issues have occurred around thing multiple times in the past"). You decide which of those issues is most important, and you make sure to discuss that, and leave other conversations for later. @@ -80,5 +81,9 @@ You should be sure you can state simple what you want to discuss. This isn't nec It's surprisingly rare for this to happen. People will often leave a problem vague, because the real root issue feels scary, and more difficult to address. Try to separate the parts of your brain that say "What's the issue", and "How can I say the issue". Those are two separate problems, and you shouldn't ignore the real root problem just because you find it scary to explain it. +If you can't simplify the topic, you probably aren't ready to have that conversation. Figure out how to simplify it, then you can decide what your next steps are. + +#### Be alert to when the topic changes +